espite
a furious Republican counter-attack to save Karl Rove, new evidence
points to George W. Bush’s political guru having joined in a White House
conspiracy to punish former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for
criticizing Bush’s use of intelligence on Iraq.

A key Republican defense of Rove has been that the
White House deputy chief of staff only recycled rumors from reporters in
2003 when he told other reporters about Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame,
and her covert identity as a CIA officer who worked on issues related to weapons of mass destruction.

But two new facts contradict that assertion and show that
Rove was coordinating his leaks about Plame with officials in Bush’s National
Security Council and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.

The first new piece of evidence is a little-noticed part of
Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper's testimony last week before a
federal grand jury in Washington.

Some news articles have noted Cooper’s statement that Rove
brought up Wilson’s wife during an interview on July 11, 2003, and that Rove
volunteered that she worked for “the agency” on WMD issues. Cooper said Rove
cited these facts in claiming that Plame was responsible for Wilson’s trip to
Africa in February 2002 to investigate whether Iraq was trying to obtain
yellowcake uranium from Niger.

What’s been overlooked, however, is another part of
Cooper’s account. Cooper said his notes reveal that Rove then added that
“material was going to be declassified in the coming days that would cast doubt
on Wilson’s mission and his findings.” In ending the conversation, Rove said,
“I’ve already said too much,” according to Cooper. [Time,
July 25, 2005, issue]

Rove’s assertion that he knew about plans to declassify
material on Wilson indicates that Rove was not just a loose-lipped talker
repeating stuff he’d heard from reporters, but he was a participant in internal
White House discussions about how to counteract Wilson’s criticisms by releasing
then-secret information.

Jumping the Gun

In their haste to counteract Wilson’s New York Times op-ed
article, which accused Bush of twisting the WMD evidence to justify the Iraq
invasion, Rove and other administration officials appear to have jumped the gun.
Instead of waiting for declassification, they simply started divulging secrets
that they thought would undermine Wilson.

Though Cooper said he wasn’t sure what Rove meant with his
comment about having “already said too much,” the phrase suggests that Rove was
aware that he had crossed the line by disclosing classified information. Federal
law prohibits government officials from disclosing classified information as
well as the intentional exposure of covert CIA operatives.

The second new fact is what Rove did after his conversation
with Cooper.

Although supposedly in a rush to leave on vacation, Rove
e-mailed Stephen J. Hadley, then Bush’s deputy national security adviser (and
now national security adviser). According to the Associated Press, Rove’s e-mail
said he “didn’t take the bait” when Cooper suggested that Wilson’s criticisms
had hurt the administration.

While it’s not entirely clear what Rove meant in the
e-mail, the significance is that Rove immediately reported to Hadley, an
official who was in a position to know classified details about Plame’s job. In
other words, the e-mail is evidence that the assault on Wilson was being
coordinated at senior White House levels.

Cooper also told the grand jury
that his second source on the allegations about the Niger trip and Wilson’s wife
was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a
leading neoconservative advocate for invading Iraq. According to Cooper, Libby
said on a not-for-attribution basis about Plame, “Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.”

Ongoing Conspiracy

For the past two years, there
have been other indications that the White House engaged in a
conspiracy to punish or discredit Wilson by leaking information about his wife,
who had served overseas as a CIA covert operative using “non-official cover” –
known as NOC – which is far more dangerous than U.S. spies operating under
official cover.

In September 2003, a senior White House official told the
Washington Post that at least six reporters had been informed about Plame before
Novak’s column appeared on July 14, 2003. The official said the disclosures
about Plame were “purely and simply out of revenge.”

From the start, the Republican assault on Wilson has
concentrated on the strange point about his wife supposedly arranging his
fact-finding trip to Niger, though it’s never been clear why the Republicans
consider this question so important. Who authorized the trip wouldn’t seem to
have much bearing on Wilson’s conclusion that the Iraqis weren’t seeking
yellowcake uranium in Niger – an assessment that turned out to be correct.

Yet, even now, the Republican National Committee continues
to focus its fire on this small part of the controversy. On July 14, for
instance, the RNC posted “Joe Wilson’s Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and
Misstatements,” which leads off with what is really an RNC misrepresentation
about the trip issue, claiming that “Wilson insisted that the Vice President’s
office sent him to Niger.”

But not even the RNC’s own citation supports this
accusation. To back up its charge, the RNC states, “Wilson said he traveled to
Niger at CIA request to help provide response to Vice President’s office.”

That’s followed by a quote from Wilson: “In February 2002,
I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice
President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence
report. … The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the
story so they could provide a response to the Vice President’s office.”

But nothing in the comments by Wilson and Cheney are in
contradiction. Wilson simply said CIA officials sent him on a mission because of
questions from Cheney’s office. Cheney said he doesn’t know Wilson. Both points
could be true, yet the RNC juxtaposed them to support a charge of dishonesty
against Wilson. (The rest of the supposed “top ten” are a similar mix of RNC
quibbles and distortions.)

A Long War

This long White House war against Wilson dates back to the
weeks after Bush cited a British “white paper” in his State of the Union address
on Jan. 28, 2003. In what became known as the “sixteen words,” Bush said, “The
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Bush’s statement about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program –
amplified by administration officials and conservative pundits – frightened many
Americans into supporting Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

On March 7, 2003, however, the International Atomic Energy
Agency exposed the Niger documents as “not authentic.” The next day, a State
Department spokesman acknowledged that the U.S. government “fell for it.”

Wilson appeared on CNN, saying that the U.S. government had
more information about the Niger fabrication. After that appearance, Wilson said sources
told him that a meeting in the Vice President’s office led to a decision “to
produce a workup” to discredit Wilson, according to his memoir, The Politics
of Truth.

Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. Though
U.S. forces ousted Saddam Hussein’s government three weeks later, no caches of
WMD were discovered, nor was there any evidence of an active nuclear-weapons
program.

As more questions were raised about the honesty of Bush’s
WMD case and Wilson spoke with some journalists on background about his Niger
trip, the workup on
Wilson took shape. On June 10, 2003, a State Department memo, written by under
secretary of state for political affairs Marc Grossman, referred to “Valerie
Wilson” as the wife of former Ambassador Wilson, the envoy who had traveled to
Niger. [NYT,
July 16, 2005]

Then, on July 6, 2003, Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New
York Times entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” He asserted, “Some of the
intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs was twisted to
exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” Wilson also appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to
elaborate on the yellowcake dispute.

Flight to Africa

Later that day, Deputy
Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage called Carl W. Ford Jr., the assistant
secretary for intelligence and research, at home and asked him to send a copy of
the June 10 memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to a former State
Department official interviewed by the New York Times.

Since Powell was preparing to
leave with Bush on a trip to Africa, Ford sent the memo to the White House for
delivery to Powell, the former official told the Times. [NYT,
July 16, 2005]

The next day, when Bush left for Africa, Powell was
carrying the memo containing the information about Plame’s work for the CIA and
other details about the yellowcake dispute, the Washington Post reported.

A day later, on July 8, 2003, right-wing columnist Robert
Novak told Rove that he (Novak) had heard that Plame had sent Wilson on the
mission to Niger, according to a lawyer who has spoken to several news
organizations. The lawyer said Rove responded, “I heard that, too.” [Washington
Post, July 17, 2005]

In his memoir, Wilson wrote that Novak – in this time
period – also told one of Wilson’s friends that he (Novak) knew about Plame’s
work for the CIA.

On July 11, 2003, CIA Director George Tenet apologized for
not keeping the yellowcake reference out of the State of the Union speech. “This
did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential
speeches,” Tenet said.

Despite that admission, the Bush administration continued
its behind-the-scenes assault on Wilson and his credibility.

Time correspondent Cooper conducted his interviews about
Wilson with Rove and Libby on July 11 and 12, respectively. Meanwhile, “a senior
administration official flagged the role of Wilson’s wife, almost in passing, to
the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus,” the Post reported in a later chronology of
the case.

On July 14, 2003, the secret about Plame’s CIA identity was
made public in Novak’s column. “Two senior
administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to
investigate” the yellowcake report, Novak also wrote.

A Wider War

After Novak’s column, the Bush administration appears to
have intensified its campaign to discredit Wilson.

On July 20, 2003, NBC’s correspondent Andrea Mitchell told
Wilson that “senior White House sources” had called her to stress “the real
story here is not the 16 words … but Wilson and his wife,” according to Wilson’s
memoir.

The next day, Wilson said he was told by MSNBC’s
Chris Matthews that “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says and I
quote, ‘Wilson’s wife is fair game.’”

When Newsday spoke with Novak – before he decided to clam
up – Novak said he had been approached by the sources with the information about
Plame. “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me,” Novak said. “They thought it
was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.” [Newsday,
July 22, 2003]

On July 22, 2003, White House spokesman Scott
McClellan denied any White House role in the Plame leak. “I’m telling you flatly
that that is not the way this White House operates,” McClellan said at a press
briefing.

On July 30, 2003, the CIA requested a Justice
Department investigation into the disclosure of a covert CIA officer, leading to
the appointment of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor to
examine possible criminality in the Plame case.

Since the scandal resurfaced in the past few weeks
– as New York Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail rather than divulge her
sources and Time magazine agreed to cooperate with Fitzgerald – the White House
has refused to comment.

But that has not stopped the RNC and the
conservative news media from continuing the P.R. war against Wilson. The Bush
administration and its allies seem to believe that the best way to prevent a
conspiracy from collapsing is to expand it.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from
Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at
secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine,
the Press & 'Project Truth.'

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